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"Do you have any idea where you saved your last file? Both Microsoft and Apple Computer are betting the answer is no. And their newest operating systems bear uncannily like-minded search tools as a result," Ina Fried reports for CNET News.

MacDailyNews Take: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is due in 10 days. Microsoft's stripped-down Windows 'Longhorn' is due by Christmas 2006, or well over a year and a half from now. If you're going to compare "newest operating systems," how far out in the future can you go? This is ridiculous. In no other industry would this stupidity ever happen. Do you think Car & Driver compares this year's Mercedes to what Ford has on the drawing boards for their 2007 model? Of course not. If Microsoft were a car maker today, they'd be promising power door locks and cruise control "real soon now" while breathlessly — as though theses features were something new and different — showing the world animated models of how they would eventually work on their cars. And CNET would have the scoop, we're sure.

Fried continues, "The Longhorn preview Microsoft gave reporters last week revealed that with the new OS, the software giant is introducing composited graphics for the desktop, something Apple has had since Mac OS X's debut. The result is that Longhorn's windows can be see-through, revealing the contents of other windows or the desktop below."

MacDailyNews Take: Apple previewed Mac OS X on January 5, 2000. We searched CNET and the Web and couldn't find a single article that pitted Windows 2000 against Mac OS X. Articles that compared Mac OS X to Windows did not start appearing until Mac OS X was shipping and available to customers.

Fried continues, "'You can imagine videos on top of videos and even translucency,' said Jim Allchin, head of Microsoft's Windows unit. In one application of the new technology, windows that are maximized or minimized spring to life in a way similar to the 'genie effect' through which Mac OS X windows are sent down to the Dock."

MacDailyNews Take: Thanks, Jimmy, but we don't have to "imagine" it (and neither did Microsoft, apparently), we've had translucency and the "genie effect" shipping since September 2000.

Fried continues, "Both companies' OSes have a search window, identified by a magnifying glass icon, in the upper right-hand corner. Users of Tiger--the new Mac OS--can save a search query as a 'smart folder,' while Microsoft has its yet-to-be-finally-named "virtual folders" that offer a similar function. But similarities--and the issue of who copied who--aside, there's a key difference between Tiger and Longhorn. Apple is coming out with Tiger in two weeks; Microsoft hopes to have Longhorn out by the second half of next year."

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Mac OS X 'Tiger' should be compared to what's available from other vendors. In Microsoft's case, that would be Windows XP SP2. Comparing Mac OS X 'Tiger' to vapor from other companies is patently idiotic and seems to us to be the only method Wintel-centric media outlets have left by which to continue prop up the Wintel hegemony as customers wait and wait and wait for something that, as promised today, won't even be able to measure up to what's been in their local Apple stores for years. Stating that one OS is due in days and the other in over a year and a half at the end of an article after treating them both as concrete products throughout doesn't suddenly transform the article into something meaningful.